Broadly speaking there were two types of computer games I used to play as a kid.

In one type you play as a character, fighter jet or something similar and you play a series of levels. You start out with 100% health and if you get hit by the enemy you lose some of your health until you lose a life. The game starts off easy so you can get through the entire level without being hit once. However as it progresses you tend to get hit more and more. The only thing that matters though is getting to the end of the level. At the end of each level you can recharge and get full health again, ready for the next level.

Then there’s the other type. In this game you play as a fighter jet moving through enemy air space. Again it starts off easy and gets progressively harder. The difference is that in this game there are no levels. There is no end point, you can never finish the game. You keep going until you get shot down. The aim of this game is to try and beat your previous high score.

For a long time my experience with trying to get sober was like playing the never-ending computer game. It starts off easy and get progressively harder. You start off with 100% health and every time you get a lust hit you lose a little bit until you lose the game. It’s not a game you can ever win, you just keep going until you get shot down. The only goal is to try to get a little further than the last time.

That’s what sobriety was like. All my effort was going into trying to stay sober a little longer than the last time. “Oops I lost it at 21 days, let’s see if this time I can get 25 days.”

It’s very disheartening to put so much effort into a game you can never win.

There is another way. It’s a game with levels. It’s not possible to get through the entire game without boosting your health levels. The designers never expected you to. That’s why the game is broken down into levels. If you can get to end of the level, you can always get back to full health.

The game is winnable, but only if I take whatever actions are necessary to get back to full health at the end of every level.

Everything in life can be learnt from. Here is a short piece about day trading. It is so similar to what we talk about here every day. Just replace a few words and it could be a quote from the gye handbook

"Trade valid setups, and don't let the last trade create fear or greed. This trade is an independent event, trade it how your strategy and trading plan dictate. Past losses can't make you afraid to trade (assuming you have a profitable strategy and know how to day trade), and past winners can't make you arrogant. Trade one trade at a time; that's all we have control over."

one day at a time...that's all we have control over..

What works for me is to view it in the following way.

When we give up something we've learned to depend on, part of us, whether you want to call it our yetzer harah or subconscious,doesn't really want to let go of it.
When we are awake and in control of our faculties, we are not indulging, and part of us is going crazy - How can we give it up?? We need it!
So our Yetzer Harah/subconscious tries to trick us. As a last ditch attempt, it inserts fantasies into our dreams.
There are 2 ways our YH/subconscious wants us to respond to these dreams.
1) Self-Torture/Guilt. Ugh, how can I have allowed myself to dream such things?? What can I do to prevent it from happening again? Did I fall? Oh no, I must've fallen! I'm a terrible person, etc...

These kinds of thoughts bring us to actually fall, and to keep falling.

2) Obsession/Entertaining the fantasy. We think about the details of the dream, and get lost in the fantasy, unable to let go, sinking lower and lower back into the quicksand.

But really there's a 3rd way to respond and that is to smile and say, "Boruch Hashem, it was just a dream! I didn't do anything! I'm still clean!" and then promptly let go of it completely by thinking about other things.

Hope that helps. Hatzlacha!

Someone whose name shall not be mentioned (in vain) has requested that i share what worked for me in hitting 90 days.

Well I told him there aint nothing new. But he persisted, the stubborn guy he is.

I wrote all this stuff before here and there.

But here it is.

1) ACTIVE POSTING (or the equivalent ie chat, partner, calls etc) So the core strategy, which is keeping the defensive awareness up and running and HOT at all times. That was through a lot of forum posting, and getting positive feedback. I go on like 10 times a day to check for msgs just in case someone left one, and to read something that might be inspiring. So guarding my eyes is always on my mind.

2) The goodnight Calendar has probably saved me outright. Regardless of Shmiras Einayim during the day, being on the computer late at night is an exposed and enduring attack, and the defenses eventually break.

3) No lust is too small to take serious, I have tried and succeeded to an extent to cut thoughts IMMEDIATELY, i find a thought is easier to stop than a sight believe it or not. Cut the thought right away, don't give the SOB free lodging in your mind. You'll get in the habit, and its doable and eventually they'll peter out.

Dear Obbermottel (but never oiverbottel),

Thanks for sharing your own powerlessness with me! And my answer to you is "yes, and no".

As I keep saying, I am not a guru, nor an expert. All I can share with you is my experience - it is the SA way. And in my experience yes - I ask Him to take it away, dump the entire struggle on Him to alleviate from me, and it works. Period. Tehillim says, "Sh'lach al Hashem y'hov'cho, vHu yichalkelecho," and it means just that.

But I said "yes and no." The "no" part is this:

I was never successful at living free of sex with myself (and all my other forms of lusting and acting out), by doing that in a vaccum. My surrender was fake, fake, fake for years in yeshivah, marriage/kollel, etc....until I finally took the actions of true surrender. Those actions were:

1- Going to meetings, and not wimpy 'phone talk sessions' where I am not really there with real people, but rather, safely and comfortably hiding behind a telephone. Though I have heard of people being sober that way and believe that it is possible (just as I believe that the 12 steps are not necessary for all people and some people out there actually can beat this addiction with willpower or mussar or even just getting married - very unlikely, but who am I to say "it is impossible!"?). But as I have no personal evidence that it would have worked for me, so I cannot advise it to anyone else with confidence. If I did, that would be making myself some sort of teacher, rather than just a recovering Pervert that Hashem is using to help others - I'd be the expert then, doling out my advice, and I would fall flat on my face. And I would lose my sobriety. And for me, that means I'd die for certain. That is the 12 th step - sharing, not telling. People here generally do not even see the difference on their radar, so they read my sharing of experience and take it as 'telling and teaching'....too bad for them.

So, maybe you can do it just between you, your G-d, and the 'forum'. I do not know.

2- Having a sponsor and hanging around with really, truly recovering men like me - whether they were Yidden or not. What I needed more than anything else was to learn how to depend on my own G-d. And I learned that from my Catholic sponsor and from my other not-at-all-frum recovering Yidden-friends (and from other recovering goyim at the meetings) as much as from other recovering frum yidden who were in the meetings. And the input from those people was far, far, more essential to saving my sobriety, my yidishkeit, my marriage, and my life than was the input from the rabbis and roshei yeshivah I had over years of frum life. For those rebbis were not crazy addicts like me, were they? So how could I expect them to teach me how to really depend on G-d? They didn't need Him as I did! Of course, those rebbis who had gone through real suffering or loss R"l, could have helped me perhaps....it's all the same. For at some point in the trip, when addicts are really giving up our precious porn, fantasy, and masturbation, it feels like we will die without it. It is suffering and loss.

That's poshut. And again, hard to do with just virtual relationships on a forum.

3- I needed to have people to call up whenever I felt (excuse me for lack of a better word) 'horny'. And I needed to actually call them up and admit it befeirush - if they were smart, they'd respond with their own weakness rather than warning me "don't do it! Gevalt! It's osur! You'll be sorry!"....or other drivel that I had already been telling myself for a decade with no result at all...

Sharing our weakness and sharing our dependence on  Power Greater than ourselves with each other is where the magic is. We get that by doing it for eachother as the hopeless addicts we really are

Im skeptical about your whereabouts skeptical. Im also skeptical that people on this forum couldnt use you. Im very skeptical. Im very skeptical that you have no more tips for us. Im very skeptical that you left us.